My first exposure to the term “suffragette” was in the song “Sister Suffragette” in the Mary Poppins movie, which I saw when I was eight or nine. I can still see Glynis Johns strutting through her front hall as she sang “Cast off the shackles of yesterday!Shoulder to shoulder into […]
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Early History of Portland, Oregon
I mentioned in an earlier post that my next novel will deal with the development of railroads in Oregon, probably in the early 1870s. I also think I will set much of the book in Portland, Oregon, which by this time had become the predominant city in Oregon, far outpacing […]
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Railroad Development in Oregon
The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, linking California to the Eastern United States. But it took many more years for Oregon to become a part of the national railroad network. I wrote in an earlier post about Byron Pengra, who started a military road in Oregon in 1864, intending […]
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Birthday Celebrations in 19th-Century America
Birthday celebrations figure in several of my novels, including my current work-in-progress. But I’ve never posted about how people actually celebrated birthdays in the 19th century. I decided some research was in order. But most families who had a lot of children could not afford to celebrate everyone’s birthday. So […]
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Researching an Oregon Parsonage
Many of the scenes in my current work-in-progress take place in a Methodist parsonage in Albany, Oregon. The minister, his wife, and their young daughter live there in 1867. Albany in 1867 was a small town, though it was the county seat of Linn County, Oregon. I envisioned a small […]
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Docks and Locks in 19th Century Oregon City
In my novels, starting with Now I’m Found, which was set in 1848-50, I show steamboats traveling the Willamette River. Steamboats began plying the waters of the lower Willamette in 1850. However, the boats had to stop at the Willamette Falls in Oregon City, which were too high for boats […]
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Time Is Relative: I’m One Degree of Separation from 1867
Recently I was doing more research for my current work-in-progress the is set in 1867. (Yes, it’s drafted. Yes, I’m heavily into editing. And yes, I’m still researching arcane issues.) I came across a tidbit of information I hadn’t focused on before, and it got me thinking about how 1867 […]
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Lawyering and More in Frontier Oregon
Mac McDougall, one of the major characters in my series, is an attorney who is also an investor in many early Oregon enterprises. Although his background is convenient for the plots of my novels, many real historical figures in Oregon’s history were like the fictional Mac. As I research, I […]
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Early Railroad Bridges Across the Missouri River
Although I have a lot of editing to do on my current work-in-progress (the sixth book in my Oregon series), I am beginning to think about the next book. I’m planning for the seventh novel to be the last book in the series, but who knows? I only have the […]
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Domestic Violence in the 19th Century
My current work-in-progress deals in part with domestic violence. The 19th century was a time of transition in society’s attitudes toward spousal abuse. It is a challenge to know how to write about the problem because their attitudes were so different than ours today. Prior to the mid-19th century, a […]
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